The year is 2010, and in a New Jersey suburb, a young teen is furiously scrolling through Tumblr on her first generation iPod Touch. She is home alone, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the only background noise in the room being Fuse TV’s Warped Tour coverage, cleverly dubbed ~*Warped Wednesdays*~.
This teen is me five years ago.
I could leave my embarrassing moment at just those sentences. There are so many angles to work with! Jersey suburb? Teen? First gen iPod Touch? Fuse?? Warped Tour???
But luckily for all of us, this is just the beginning.
As I entered eighth grade, I encountered brand new territory that I was in no way prepared for.
Because the Catholic school I’d previously attended closed, I was forced to finish my last year of middle school at a brand new school. All of my new classmates were skinny girls with long straight hair and glitter eye shadow, who possessed the ability to pull out an expertly executed duck face at any given moment.
Everything was foreign to lil’ 14-year-old me. I didn’t understand why every girl in my class had to use the bathroom time in between classes to try to straighten her hair, or how they found push up bras comfortable. I got made fun of for praising Taylor Swift and displaying a lack of interest in boys my age. But who wanted to hang out at a New Jersey mall’s food court with someone’s friend’s friend on a ~*date*~ anyway? Since I so obviously didn’t fit in, everything that year made me anxious and insecure. To find an outlet for all of my angst and the obvious superiority complex I was developing, I turned to alt/pop punk music and Tumblr, lol.
Desperate to be different and find something I actually loved, I turned away from the radio’s Top 40 hits and began to explore other music. I already loved Paramore, so through them I found my other absolute favorite band — Jack’s Mannequin — which led me to Warped Tour and beyond. By the time the school year ended, I was feverishly trying to consume as much pop punk as possible. I had finally found a community I loved and felt accepted in.
On Tumblr, I started to follow people simply associated with bands: photographers, writers and merch people. Warped Tour held an almost holy place in my mind. Working on it one day became my dream. The majority of the users I followed were girls in their late teens to mid-20s who were on the road with my favorite bands and non-profits. I began to send them Asks; I wanted to learn everything I could about the music industry. Some users I followed started to be mean when responding. It seemed that the more “well-known” people in the Warped circuit were getting hundreds of Asks a day and just grew annoyed. My guess is that some were jaded and others were tired of people trying to use them to meet band members. I began to lose track of who was working doing what and just tried to remember who was actually nice to their followers.
During the two-year span I spent thoroughly convinced I’d live my life in the back of a sweaty 12-passenger van with five band members and crew, there was one user I remember always feeling a connection with: Leah Blowes.
When I started following her, Leah was a girl working at what I thought was one of the coolest parts of Warped — the non-profit booths. She specifically worked with the 11:11 Foundation, which was an organization inspired by Andrew McMahon — lead singer of Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin — and aimed at raising money and awareness to youth affected by cancer. I instantly thought she was amazing. She was kind and really funny, pretty and relatable. On top of that, she loved Taylor Swift. It was almost like she was the older version of me, or at least who I wanted to one day be. I had a major girl crush on her personality and meaningful, yet fun job. She was hanging out with all of my favorite bands and always willing to give advice to any music blog that asked her questions. Leah was accomplishing so much in my eyes but remained humble, sweet and open. I remember always sending her Asks, trying to build an Internet friendship, and after a bit she followed me back. We stopped talking all while she remained a total sweetheart.
Fast forward five years. It’s November 2014. I’m on Tumblr (lol no surprise) and I’m still following Leah (true). She posts an article for a website called Femsplain about Taylor Swift.
Do I know what Femsplain is? No. Do I know who Taylor Swift is? Yes. I read and love the article. Three months later, I’m on Facebook and notice that a friend of mine, Gabriela (Femsplain Founding Editor), posts that a feminist website she helped found was featured on The Huffington Post. Obviously proud and very confused as to how I missed the ~*hype*~, I read the article and find Femsplain. As I scroll through the Featured Contributors, I see a familiar face. I don’t believe it can actually be her, but I hover over her photo and gasp as I read “Leah Blowes.” All my worlds collide at once as my 14-year-old self takes over, and I instantly fangirl in the silence of my dorm room.
The Internet makes the world a smaller place and now as a 19-year-old, I’m a bit embarrassed to say I once fangirled over someone I now share mutual friends with. But looking back at my young teen self, I think she did a damn good job at finding the right young, hard-working females to look up to.
Lol, hi Leah.
